tion of the causes why selected pebbles may have been placed in ancient graves. Before proceeding, however, to the next part of my subject, which carries me back from recent times to those long anterior, not only to the use of metals, but to that of the various stone implements of which I have been treating, it will be well to say a few words as to the results of the general survey which, so far as regards the antiquities of the Neolithic, or Surface Stone Period, is now complete.
These results, I must acknowledge, are, to my mind, by no means entirely satisfactory. It is true that regarding the various forms of objects described from a technological, or even a collector's, point of view, the series of stone antiquities found in Britain does not contrast unfavourably with that from any other country. We have hatchets, adzes, chisels, borers, scrapers, and tools of various kinds, and know both how they were made and how they were used; we have battle-axes, lances, and arrows for war, or for the chase; we have various implements and utensils adapted for domestic use; we have the personal ornaments of our remote predecessors, and know something of their methods of sepulture, and of their funeral customs. Indeed, so far as external appliances are concerned, they are almost as fully represented as would be those of any existing savage nation by the researches of a most painstaking traveller. And yet when we attempt any chronological arrangement of the various forms we find ourselves almost immediately at fault. From the number of objects found, we may indeed safely infer that they represent the lapse of no inconsiderable interval of time, but how great we know not; nor, in most cases, can we say with any approach to certainty, whether a given object belongs to the commencement, middle, or close, of the Polished Stone Period of Britain.
True it is that there are some forms, which from their association together in graves, we know to have been contemporaneous; and some, which from their occasionally occurring with interments belonging to a time when bronze was beginning to come into use, we must assign to the later portion of the Neolithic Period of this country; yet it is impossible to say of these latter forms that they may not have been long in use before bronze was known; nor of the former, that certain kinds were not introduced at a much earlier period than the others, which at a later date became associated with them. The utmost that can with safety be affirmed is, that some forms, such as the perforated battle-axes, the skil-
